Abstract
What factors contribute to hindsight bias, the phenomenon whereby the known outcome of an event appears obvious only after the fact? The Causal Model Theory (CMT) of hindsight bias (Nestler et al. in Soc Psychol 39:182–188, 2008a; in J Expl Psychol: Learn Mem Cog 34:1043–1054, 2008b; Pezzo in Mem 11:421–441, 2003; Wasserman et al. in Pers Soc Psychol Bull 17:30–35, 1991) posits that hindsight bias can occur when people have the opportunity to identify potential causal antecedents and evaluate whether they could have led to the outcome. Two experiments incorporating highly controlled minimalist scenarios supported the CMT. As predicted by the CMT, hindsight bias occurred when the causal factor explained the actual outcome better than the alternative outcome, and reverse hindsight bias occurred when the causal factor explained the alternative outcome better than the actual outcome. Moreover, we found new evidence that outcome knowledge alone was insufficient to elicit hindsight bias in the absence of a potential causal antecedent. Implications for future directions in hindsight bias research are discussed.
Notes
People rarely predict exactly 50–50 in foresight in the hindsight bias literature, most likely because of the incorporation of background knowledge into the task (see Hawkins and Hastie 1990 for a review).
References
Anderson CA, Sechler ES (1986) Effects of explanation and counter explanation on the development and use of social theories. J Pers Soc Psychol 50:24–34
Birch SAJ, Bloom P (2007) The curse of knowledge in reasoning about false beliefs. Psychol Sci 18:382–386
Einhorn H, Hogarth R (1986) Judging probable cause. Psychol Bull 99:3–19
Fischhoff B (1975) Hindsight ≠ foresight: the effect of outcome knowledge on judgment under uncertainty. J Exp Psy: Hum Percep Perform 1:288–299
Goodwin P (2010) Why hindsight can damage foresight. Forsight 17:5–7
Guilbault RL, Bryant FB, Brockway JH, Posavac EJ (2004) A meta-analysis of research on hindsight bias. Bas Appl Soc Psychol 26:103–117
Hastie R, Schroeder C, Weber R (1990) Creating complex social conjunction categories from simple categories. Bull Psychonom Soc 28:242–247
Hawkins SA, Hastie R (1990) Hindsight: biased judgments of past events after the outcomes are known. Psychol Bull 107:311–327
Hölzl E, Kirchler E (2005) Causal attribution and hindsight bias for economic developments. J Appl Psychol 90:167–174
Kunda Z, Miller DT, Claire T (1990) Combining social concepts: the role of causal reasoning. Cog Sci 14:551–577
Mark MM, Mellor S (1991) Effect of self-relevance on an event on hindsight bias: the foreseeability of a layoff. J Appl Psychol 76:569–577
Mazursky D, Ofir C (1990) “I could never have expected it to happen”: the reversal of the hindsight bias. Organ Behav Hum Dec Proc 46:20–33
Mazursky D, Ofir C (1996) “I knew it all along” under all conditions? Or possibly “I could not have expected it to happen” under some conditions: comments on Mark and Mellor (1994). Organ Behav Hum Dec Proc 66:237–240
Mazzoni GA, Loftus EF, Kirsch I (2001) Changing beliefs about implausible autobiographical events: a little plausibility goes a long way. J Expl Psychol Appl 7:51–59
Miceli PM, Kennedy LA, Sanna LJ (2010) Making sense of the past: narrative and outcome order affects hindsight judgments. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the society for personality and social psychology, Las Vegas, NV
Nestler S, Egloff B (2009) Increased or reversed? The effect of surprise on hindsight bias depends on the hindsight component. J Expl Psychol: Learn Mem Cog 35:1539–1544
Nestler S, von Collani G (2008a) Hindsight bias and the activation of counterfactual mind sets. Expl Psychol 55:342–349
Nestler S, von Collani G (2008b) Hindsight bias, conjunctive explanations, and causal attribution. Soc Cog 26:482–493
Nestler S, Blank H, von Collani G (2008a) Hindsight bias and causal attribution: a causal model theory of creeping determinism. Soc Psychol 39:182–188
Nestler S, Blank H, von Collani G (2008b) Hindsight bias doesn’t always come easy: causal models, cognitive effort, and creeping determinism. J Expl Psychol: Learn Mem Cog 34:1043–1054
Nestler S, Blank H, Egloff B (2010) Hindsight ≠ Hindsight: experimentally induced dissociations between hindsight components. J Expl Psychol: Learn Mem Cog 36:1399–1413
Ofir C, Mazursky D (1997) Does a surprising outcome reinforce or reverse the hindsight bias? Organ Behav Hum Dec Proc 69:51–57
Pedzek K, Blandon-Glitin I, Gabbay P (2006) Imagination and memory: does imagining implausible events lead to false autobiographical memories? Psychol Bull Rev 13:764–769
Pennington DC (1981) Being wise after the event: an investigation of hindsight bias. Curr Psychol Res 1:271–282
Pezzo MV (1996) Removing the hindsight bias: a test of the motivated processing hypothesis. Dissertation, Ohio University
Pezzo MV (2003) Surprise, defense, or making sense: what removes hindsight bias? Mem 11:421–441
Pezzo MV, Pezzo SP (2007) Making sense of failure: a motivated model of hindsight bias. Soc Cog 25:147–164
Pohl RF (2007) Ways to assess hindsight bias. Soc Cog 25:14–31
Royzman EB, Cassidy KW, Baron J (2003) “I know, you know”: epistemic egocentrism in children and adults. Rev Gen Psychol 7:38–65
Stanovich KE, West RF (2008) On the relative independence of thinking biases and cognitive ability. J Pers Soc Psychol 94:672–695
Tversky A, Kahneman D (1974) Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and biases. Sci 185:1124–1131
Wasserman D, Lempert RO, Hastie R (1991) Hindsight and causality. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 17:30–35
Acknowledgments
We thank Baruch Fischhoff and Reid Hastie for sharing their materials with us to adapt for use in this project, Woo-kyoung Ahn, John Coley, Rachel Litwin, Joanne Miller, Benjamin Rottman, and Brianna Sullivan for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript, and Shradha Khadge, Amanda Civiletto, Daniel Paulus, Daniel Noonan, Megan Alpert, and Anna Tang for help with data collection. This research was presented at the 2010 meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Las Vegas, NV. Support for this project came from National Institute of Mental Health Grants MH084047 and MH081291 to Nancy S. Kim. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Yopchick, J.E., Kim, N.S. Hindsight bias and causal reasoning: a minimalist approach. Cogn Process 13, 63–72 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-011-0414-z
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-011-0414-z